Ability to set time interval to run Hazel rule?

Would it be possible to add functionality to set intervals for runnning individual rules?

Many of my rules don't need to be run more than once per 15-30 minutes or so and some once or twice per day for example.

thanks

Need to think about it. Could you post some examples so I can get a sense of how you would use the feature? In general, Hazel is triggered by events and does not work on files in batch. There also may be a solution with the use of date attributes.

Hi,

For example, if I want to move files over 30 days old from one directory to another, that rule only needs to be run once per day.

If I want to label or move files after I've installed them, it only needs to be run a few times per day (every hour or two perhaps?) or maybe every 15-30 minutes.

does that help?

thanks for the prompt response!

I think you needn't concern yourself too much with when or how often the rules get run. For instance, in the "30 day old" case, files would be moved out as they hit the 30 day mark. Maybe I'm missing something but it shouldn't matter if it happens all at once or one by one. Basically, Hazel is always on the lookout and should not be particularly resource-heavy for you to notice that it's running.

Of course, if there are some other constraints let me know otherwise I say just set up the rules and not worry about when it happens.

As I grab pictures that I want to keep in iPhoto, I put them in a "pictures to import" directory. I have a recurring reminder to import the pics every couple of weeks. I also extensively use the Film Rolls function in iPhoto to organize images in my library.

When I have a rule set up on my "pictures to import" folder for pictures whose date added is not in the last two weeks, Hazel imports the pictures to iPhoto as expected, but one picture at a time. This leads to N film rolls for N pictures.

If Hazel could run on the whole folder at once, that might work, like checking based on last modified date of the folder. Or if Hazel could grab a bunch of files at once so the batch is sent to iPhoto as a Film roll, which is basically doing the same thing as a cron job.

Unfortunately, Hazel doesn't really work in a batch fashion like that. But, you could write a rule to operate on the folder as a whole. In such a case, though, you will have to use your own script to do the actual importing.

I'll have to think about whether Hazel should do batch processing and if so, how it will present that to the user without confusing things.

For now, though, I think an Applescript is the way to go, or use cron. You could have Hazel move files into a folder and a cron job that will take all the files in that folder and import them wholesale.

I can see between cron, launchd, and Automator/iCal, there's already a lot of other batch options, so maybe trying to turn Hazel into the swiss army knife of doing things isn't the greatest idea.

I just got turned on to Automator, I think I'll use that for the batch processing, and Automator can do plug-ins to iCal alarms, which I'm already using a lot.

Actually, we can do this now, as of 2.0. Use a "Date Last Matched is not in the last" rule to run actions more or less at an interval. (Really, this just guarantees *at least* a certain amount of time before the actions run again.) Note that if any actions fail for an item, that item will match again the next time through, regardless of the interval.

Most of the time it's best to write your rules more descriptively and let Hazel figure out when actions should be run, but when you need it this will work.